New, shorter tower in line for Fox Plaza

If you think it’s windy now on Market Street near Van Ness Avenue, just wait.

It might get better. Or not.

The Board of Supervisors have given a key victory to the developer looking to add a second residential tower at Fox Plaza near City Hall, unanimously denying an environmental appeal that warned of dangerous wind impacts from the side-by-side towers.

City planners said two separate wind assessments found that the new tower wouldn’t worsen the wind problem and might slightly improve it.

The project calls for the demolition of a two-story office and retail building at 1390 Market St. that currently houses a post office. An 11-story residential tower with retail on the ground floor would replace it, rising next to the current 29-story Fox Plaza tower. Both would share the existing parking garage.

The citizens group San Franciscans for Reasonable Growth appealed the environmental plan for the 10th and Market project, saying the intersection has “the most dangerous winds in all of San Francisco.”

An environmental review found winds so hazardous that bicyclists are knocked off their bikes or pushed into cars, said Sue Hestor, a land-use attorney representing the group.

Hestor said she is not opposed to a second tower but wants measures taken to help cut the wind.

City planners, though, said the new tower might help the problem, and officials had no authority to order changes to the older tower because it was built in the 1960s and has a different owner than the current project, making it separate from this environmental approval process.

An appeal of the Planning Commission’s unanimous approval of the project is pending.